ENG 5783/ ENG 7063African American Literature/ Issues in Culture

ENG 5783/ ENG 7063African American Literature/ Issues in Culture

19th-Century African American NovelistsRespond to Uncle Tom's Cabin

Fall 2010: Mon 5:30-8:15 p.m. AR 3.01.18B

Joycelyn Moody, PhD

Office location: 2.306C Main Office phone: 210.458.6857

Office hours: Thurs 3-5 pm & by appt Email:

Course Description: This seminar is designed to

• Introduce graduate students to early canonical African American novels and short stories, published after/ in response to Uncle Tom's Cabin, the US Civil War, Reconstruction, and the “nadir” at the end of the nineteenth century.
• Expose students to the major rhetorical tropesand canonical features of early African American fiction.
• Help students to identifyaesthetic, cultural, and ideological foundationsof later 19th-century African American traditions in fiction.
• Require students to situate themselves in seminar as raced sociopolitical beings by using current US race theory.
• Introduce students to basic tools of archival research using material artifacts, digital collections, and newspaper databases.
• Help students to develop strategies for using archival research for scholarly inquiry.
• Strengthen students’ skills in researching, organizing, and writing academic papers
• Strengthenstudents’ skills in orally presenting results of academic research

University services and policies

Disability Services. Support services, including registration assistance and equipment, are available to students with documented disabilities through the Office of Disabled Student Services (DSS), MS 2.03.19. Students are encouraged to contact that office at 458-4157 or at any time these services are needed.

Academic Honesty. For information on the University’s policies on academic honesty, see Students are expected to maintain high standards of academic honesty. As the University policies indicate, conduct such as plagiarism, collusion to cheat, the use of another person’s research without appropriate acknowledgement or attribution, or the misuse of previously prepared course material will not be tolerated. Suspicion and charges of academic dishonesty will be investigated; if academic dishonesty is proved, a student will be reported to the Department Chair for disciplinary probation, suspension, or expulsion. Adjudicated cases of plagiarism will result in immediate failure of the entire course.

As cautioned in University documents, students should avoid unintentional plagiarism, which is a form of academic dishonesty that occurs when

• one purchases, downloads, cuts and pastes, steals, borrows, or otherwise acquires a text and claims it as one’s own (with one’s name);
• one copies passages word for word from someone else’s writing without citing the source;
• one receives information or research data from a published or unpublished source such as the Internet, a CD/DVD, or another electronic source without acknowledging that source;
• one falsifies documentation information such as text titles, page numbers, or the contents of essays;
• one paraphrases or summarizes a text without acknowledging the original;
• two or more persons co-write one paper, then separately submit the text as the work of an individual student;
• one submits for a particular course a paper that has been or will be submitted for completion of requirements for another course without the approval of both instructors; or,
• one uses someone else’s ideas, structure, evidence, or argument without changing it substantially and also not indicating that changes were made.

Course Requirements:

• Regular, engage, and prepared attendance (two absences granted; no excuse needed).
• Readings for each session should be thoroughly and thoughtfully completed before due dates.

All written assignments should be submitted electronically before 5 pm on date due.

All written work should be typed in 12-point font with one-inch margins on all sides. Use the current MLA style sheet to document sources for all citations.

Late work will be penalized per diem. All written work must be punctually submitted for successful completion of the seminar; no written assignment is optional. “Incomplete” grades will be granted only in extreme circumstances.

Course assignments for credit

10% Self-Assessments (2)

10% Seminar citizenship (e.g., required individual meeting with professor; weekly thoughtful oral participation through constructive questions and observations; evidence of astute reading preparation; occasional impromptu short writing assignments)

10%Digitized Newspaper Analysis team presentation (up to 30 minutes oral)

25%Digitized Newspaper Analysis essay (5-8 pages, double spaced)

45%Seminar Research Paper (15-20 pages, double spaced)

Due dateAssignment

ThSept 16Individual meeting with professor.

Th Sept 16Students should browse all course fictions and specify top three choices for team oral presentation;professor will use choices to set presentation teams.

M Sept 20Educational Autobiography using CRT

M Oct 11Digitized Newspaper Analysis (essay)

M Oct 18 Seminar project topic selection (paragraph comprised of 2-5 sentences)

M Oct 25Seminar project proposal w/ topic, hypothesis, and methodology (150-300 words)

M Nov 8 Seminar project Annotated Bibliography

M Nov 22Seminar project complete draft (absolutely no extensions granted)

M Dec 13Seminar projectfinal revision& Self-Assessment

Dates tbaDigitized Newspaper Analysis team presentation

Extra credit granted for attendance at and300-500 word commentary on an approved campus, local, or regional event.

Assignment Details

Educational Autobiography and Final Self-Assessment. The first writing assignment should be 1-2-pages typed, single-spaced; it should give details of your personal history as a student and as a person with your particular racial identity. Use it to clarify some of the academic and individual racialized experiences that you bring to the seminar, and also to outline the goals you have set for the course.

The final self-assessment essay should also consist of 1-2 typed, single-spaced pages. This essay might be a narrative about your overall intellectual experience in this seminar—why you took it, what challenges it presented to you along the way, and how you addressed them. Or it might focus specifically on your writing for the course, what you learned from producing one or more required texts, what you learned about your strengths and weaknesses as a scholar. In sum, it should explore your growth through the seminar.

Digitized Newspaper Analysis. For both the essay and the team oral presentation, follow these steps:

Select one of the seminar’s required serialized fictions. Locate this novel or short story in its original context in a digitized newspaper collection.Read a portion of your chosen fiction in this format.

Browse the rest of that newspaper issue(s) for articles or advertisements indicative of the sociopolitical and cultural contexts from which the seminar fiction emerged. Considering the material conditions surrounding the text’s production, circulation, and consumption, generate 3-5 critical questions for scholarly analysis of the seminar fiction.

Focus on 3-5 news items in the issue. What do they suggest about the fiction’s original readership? About the targeted reading audience? About the newspaper’s editorial policies?

What kinds of additional information do you need to answer the questions above? E.g., Are there particular individuals or publishers about whom you need more information? What visual or material texts—e.g., broadsides, photographs,slave bills, rival serials, other periodicals—help to answer your questions? Are there particular events mentioned in either the newspaper or the fiction that you think require further exploration?

Use TARO, ArchiveGrid, ContentDM, Oaister/worldcat, and Google to locate two relevant archival collections, at least one of which should be a non-digitized collection. Browse the collections’ available finding aids, and determine which boxes you would request to see if you were going to pursue this research further. Explain your choices by articulating the kinds of information you would expect to find in these collections.

Team Oral Presentationon digitized newspaper paratexts and (c)overt editorial policies. Teams will be granted up to 30 minutes near the beginning of germane class sessions to present their scholarly experiences and results in completing the Digitized Newspaper Analysis. For this assignment, use wordle to create a visual image of key words in the pertinent serialized texts. Grading criteria: content accuracy, organization and clarity of information, poise, visual aids, and time use, evidence of teammates’ collaboration and cooperation.

Seminar Research Project assignment: prompt completion of all five partsrequired for 45% of the final grade. Miss one step, fail the whole assignment.

1. First, you must submit a topic for approval by the professor.
2. Then you will develop an original proposal about your approved topic, and submit it with a proposed project title, hypothesis (i.e., tentative primary claim), and a sentence or two about the major methodology you will use to develop your argument.
3. In the next step, you will submit an annotated bibliography composed of your revised title, a 150-200 word revised hypothesis, and a list of 10-12 print and multimedia resources that you have consulted for information on your topic. The annotations can be single spaced.
4. Most “points” of the assignment will be awarded to a complete draft of the final project, which will be read and returned with professor’s comments before
5. You must submit a revised final version.

This course will undoubtedly challenge many of your values, attitudes, beliefs, and ideas. You will need not only to come to class open-mindedly, but you will also need to approach your reading assignments open-mindedly. I expect you to raise questions in class and to see me in my office hours for further help if needed. It is your responsibility to contact me with any problems or issues you feel are getting in the way of your learning.

Predictably, many of the course readings deal with controversial issues that may prove difficult to discuss: racism, sadism, xenophobia, physical atrocities, and sexual violence. At alternate points in the course, each of us will feel upset, discouraged, angry, distraught, proud, relieved, ashamed, and guilty about issues raised in discussion and course texts. If we are brave enough, we will engage in difficult, transformative discussions. Let me highlight one issue in particular that the class will encounter: the word nigger, which appears in many course readings. Given both the intense cultural weight and the sociopolitical history of this epithet, please refrain from using it unless you are reading aloud from a course text. Obviously, our guiding principle is to respect each other at all times.

Required literary texts

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, and Elizabeth Ammons, ed. Uncle Tom's Cabin [1852]: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. A Norton Critical Edition. 2nd ed. 2009.

Brown, William Wells, and Robert S. Levine, ed. Clotel, or, the President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. 1853. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.

Wilson, Harriet E., P. Gabrielle Foreman, and Reginald H. Pitts, eds. Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. 1859. Penguin, 2009.

Collins, Julia C., William L. Andrews, and Mitchell A. Kachun, eds. The Curse of Caste, or, the Slave Bride: A Rediscovered African American Novel. 1865. Oxford, 2006.

Dunbar, Paul Laurence, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and David Bradley, eds. The Sport of the Gods [1902]: And Other Essential Writings. Modern Library, 2005.

Griggs, Sutton Elbert. Imperium in Imperio. 1899. Modern Library, 2003.

Chesnutt, Charles W., and William L. Andrews, ed. The Portable Charles W. Chesnutt. Penguin, 2008.

Hopkins, Pauline E. Of One Blood, or, the Hidden Self. 1902.Ed. Deborah McDowell. Washington Square, 2004.

Recommended scholarly texts

Andrews, William L., Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford University Press, 1997.

Davidson, Adenike Marie. The Black Nation Novel: Imagining Homeplaces in Early African American Literature. Third World Press, 2008.

McCaskill, Barbara, and Caroline Gebhard, eds. Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877-1919. New York University Press, 2006.

Addenda. Often I will email you with updated assignments, additional resources, and Internet links. Please plan to check your UTSA email account regularly. Please do not eat in class except during announced breaks.

Course Calendar. Always subject to change. Additional readings may be assigned during the semester.Please silence cell phone ringers before each class session.

Week 1/ Aug. 30

Introductions and Goals. Meet Special Collections Librarian JuliMcLoone at JPL Reference Desk for library instruction session in JPL LEC.

Week 2/ Sept 6LABOR DAY HOLIDAY No University Classes

During this week, go to JPL Multimedia Center and watch Race: The Power of an Illusion, available at JPL Reserve Shelf.

Weeks 3-4/ Sept 13 & 20

Race theory (texts tba); Uncle Tom's Cabin. Finish reading at least Vol. I by Sept 13; finish entire novel by Sept 20.

ThSept 16Last day to meet individually with Prof. Moody.Last day to specify top three choices for team oral presentation.

M Sept 20DUE: Educational Autobiography using race theory.

Week 5/ Sept 27

Meet Juli McLooneat JPL Reference Desk for second archive instruction session in JPL Special Collections.

Read and be prepared to comment on any item of your choice in each of the NCE/ Ammons ed. sections on “Backgrounds…,” 19th-century reception, and post-1900 reviews; text of 1850 Fugitive Slave Acts. Read Marva Banks, "Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Antebellum Black Response" in Readers in History: Nineteenth Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response (Johns Hopkins UP, 1993), 209-27. (Email Professor for pdf copy.)

F-S Oct 1-2Special conference on millennialism and providentialism in the era of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, Rice University, Houston, Texas.

Week 6/ Oct 4

Levine and Brown, introduction and Clotel(pp. 3-227).

Th-F Oct 7-8“Fault Lines”: UT-Austin graduate student conference exploring these questions, specified in cfp: “What role does sentiment—personal and political, individual and national—play in national crises? How do people mobilize or fail to mobilize around emotional response? Moreover, what kind of comparisons can be drawn between contemporary and historical moments of crisis, especially in terms of the way in which these moments of crisis are narrated?”

Week 7/ Oct 11

DUE: Digitized Newspaper Analysis (essay).Harper, “The Two Offers” (find and print any online copy).In addition to Child (274-283) and Brown (271-73, 299-301, 306-27), read and be prepared to comment on any item of your choice in each of the Levine ed. sections on “Sources…,” “Race…,” and “Resistance” in “Cultural Contexts” (229-516).

F Oct 15Noon lecture by Rebecca Skloot on The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks(UTSA Health Science Center Auditorium)

Week 8/ Oct 18

DUE: Seminar project topic selection.Wilson, Foreman, and Pitts, Our Nig (xxxv-109)

Week 9/ Oct 25

DUE: Seminar project proposal paragraph.

Week 10/ Nov 1Tba.

Week 11/ Nov 8

DUE: Seminar project Annotated Bibliography. Collins, Andrews, and Kachun, The Curse of Caste(vii-132). Selections (tba) from African American Review special issue on Curse.

W-F Nov 10-12 Graduate Association for African-American History (GAAAH) at Uof Memphis (TN): Annual Graduate History Conference in African American History.

Week 12/ Nov 15

Griggs, Verdelle, and West,Imperium in Imperio(vii-177);Text of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Week 13/ Nov 22

DUE: Seminar project complete draft.Hopkins and McDowell, Of One Blood(v-193)

Th-F Nov 25-26 THANKSGIVING HOLIDAYS: No University classes

Week 14/ Nov 29

Dunbar, Fishkin, and Bradley, The Sport of the Gods (295-433); Chesnutt, The Portable Charles W. Chesnutt pp. 5-29, 58-88, 109-27, 181-93

Week 15/ M-Tu Dec 6-7Fall 2010 Study Days

Week 16/ M Dec 13 5:00 PM - 7:30 PMOfficialFinal Exam Period.DUE: Seminar projectfinal revision& Self-Assessment. Seminar celebration (location tba).

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